One year ago I resolved to spend more time in 2019 engaged in reading, not from a Kindle or similarly soul-numbing modern electronic gadget, but old-school and tactile.
Mission (perhaps surprisingly) accomplished.
I wouldn’t know how to go about choosing a favorite from among the books listed below. “Light” reading is largely alien to me, and generally I’m not seeking to be “entertained” in any conventional sense. There are exceptions, although in large measure I read to learn.
Having said this, and conceding that seven of these books pertain in greater or smaller measure to the European locales we recently toured (Croatia, Slovenia and particularly Trieste), it seems clear that the latter half of 2019 was a tantamount to a university course on the history of these areas.
No credit hours will be awarded, but those aren’t necessary to learn something, and I did — and Pynchon’s Vineland was, yes, very entertaining.
Back in August, I also got around to updating a list.
ON THE AVENUES: The 32 most influential books in my life.
—
Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, a novel by James Joyce
James
Joyce and Italo Svevo: The Story of a Friendship, by Stanley Price
My Fatherland, a
novel by Goran Vojnovic
Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, by Mark Kurlansky
Baron: A Journey through the Vanishing World of the Transylvanian Aristocracy, by Jaap Scholten
Zeno (Zeno’s Conscience), a novel by Italo Svevo
and the Meaning of Nowhere, travel/history by Jan Morris
Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, non-fiction by Louis Sell
Weidermann
in a River Town,
local history by Justin Endres
Travels in Northern Greece, a travelogue by Patrick Leigh Fermor
